Category Archives: Family

Like many families, ours has decidedly been structured around a matriarchal tradition: my mother has been the central figure who has largely held our family together throughout my entire life. From my first moments of mental recognition, I saw that our mother was the person who really ran things in our home. Dad may have gone out to work every day and doled out discipline when we got out of hand, but I saw and understood that the real person in charge was Mom. As such, I never doubted or had any society-skewed view of gender roles in our home. I viewed my parents largely as equals, and if anything the strength and power and charge of our family resided in Mom. If I have any decent recognition of the equality among genders, it’s due to my Mom’s example. 

She taught me and my brother many things over the years, molding us into the people we would become, teaching us a certain grace and unassuming humility, mostly because we never saw her engage in ugliness or confrontations or judgment. She took the best of her Catholic faith and lived it rather than preaching or talking about it. Her work as a nurse and later a professor of nursing showed me how we could help others – not by shouting about it or heralding her own efforts, but simply by doing. 

It’s a tradition that continues to this day, as she takes care of my father in his advancing age and medical condition, as well as her three grandchildren, to whom she is affectionately known as ‘Lola’. Her two sons are also still largely dependent on her for guidance and strength, as we find our own way as adults. This is her birthday, and while she deserves this sort of recognition every day, I’m putting it into print here to honor her in the only way that I can. 

Happy birthday, Mom – we love you!

My godson is turning into quite the charmer, with those eyelashes and that giddy smile. He also has an intuitive timer to keep such charms to himself and away from the prying eye of the camera phone: as soon as I lift my phone to capture one of his poses, he pauses his smile, only to instantly resume once I put the silly phone down. Oh what lessons this boy is going to teach us! 

I was quick and persistent enough to catch this one quick smile, and then I pocketed the phone to enjoy the rest in person. He seems to be a happy baby, and he’s just starting to bounce around and become more active. I’ll be documenting his progress in spite of his camera-dodging efforts. 

When all else fails, a new baby can make believers out of the most jaded of us. 

Plan B is the code name for our next trip to Boston – named as much for the city as for my second attempt at a getaway-weekend with the twins. The first time we were scheduled to do this, plans were derailed due to a storm. That weekend had to move forward without Emi and Noah, but not without my promise to make it happen again at a later date. 

In anticipation of that, we had them over for a New Year’s Day sleepover, and in the morning-after we posed and vamped for a few photos before and after a run to Starbucks. Everyone says they are growing up so quickly, and I see it now and then when I’ve been away from them for a while. 

It’s only a matter of time before I lose them to their phones, if it hasn’t already happened. But they seem to have a good balance so far of turning them off and entering real life – and there are moments when I will be all too happy to have them distracted by something other than my incessant attempts at being entertaining. (This majesty doesn’t just happen without great effort.)

There are worse ways to spend a winter weekend, and until we can burst onto the patio and into the pool, we will have to find coziness and fun in the attic, which is happily outfitted with a treasure trove of hats and wraps and costumes to rival anything of Miss Havisham. Uncle Al’s wardrobe runs wide and deep, like the brocade carpet bag of Mary Poppins, and is just as magical.

The first guests of a New Year set the tone for the months to come. Well, not really, actually not at all, but our attic was graced by my niece and nephew on the first night of the year, so it sounds good. They are growing much taller and much too quickly – soon they will tower over us, though no shift in authority will take place. On this night, I promised them a dinner of appetizers, so we made a quick market run, then returned to set up lumpia, cocktail wieners, clementines, Vermonth cheddar cheese, Honeycrisp apples, various crackers and chips, a Rice Krispies treat, a pomegranate, pears, pineapple, Fresca, and a bag of five shrimp. It was, as Emi declared, the most random collection of food that they’d ever had for dinner. Welcome back to Uncle Al and Uncle Andy’s kitchen!

After ‘dinner’ we worked on some playlists for a possible trip to Boston (to make up for this one that the twins had to miss). Noah came up with the funkified portion of the list, while Emi suggested some Tay Tay Etcetera. We went to the basement to watch a movie and paint our nails, and then it was bedtime. After tucking them in, I read a few poems from Rumi, popped Bab’s Christmas Casserole in the oven, then hunkered down myself. All in all, it was a lovely start to the year.

While Mom had to run a few holiday errands, I spent a recent morning with Dad. We are grateful that he is still trudging along, even if the decline has been steady and sometimes difficult to watch. There are still glimmers of the man who raised me, and every once in a while he surfaces behind his cloudy eyes and deteriorating body. I see him most often when we share a laugh, usually over something like when he grabs at the glass of apple juice I’m holding for him, thinking it’s about to fall. It’s impossible to tell what he sees or thinks at any given moment, but when we catch each other in a laugh, it feels like it once did, even as it tugs differently at the heart. 

On that morning, I fed him the rest of his breakfast, bringing each forkful to his mouth, where for the most part he would, out of habit or desire, open his mouth to taste each bite. Every few minutes I’d pause and place the straw in the cup of apple juice at his lips, which he gulped down helpfully. I’ve noticed he enjoys the juice more when it’s been cooled with an ice cube, so it’s the least I can do to indulge him in this simple addition. 

Later in the day, after he’s had his fun going through arranging and re-arranging the contents of his wallet – something that harkens to his OTB days – I will bring out lunch that Mom left for us, carefully lifting each forkful to his mouth again, until he remembers and gets the hang of it. Sometimes he just needs a little jumpstart like that. Whenever he pauses and loses track, I’ll give it another try, filling a fork and telling him it’s good.

As I sat there near the sunny window of a late November morning, a memory of Dad peeling grapes for me as a kid came to mind. In that very same space, of that very same room, he had once taken the time and made the intricate effort to peel the skin off grapes and feed them to me. It was an indulgence that would not be repeated very often, but it has remained a special moment in my memory. I couldn’t have been more than seven years old, so I’m not sure why I remember it – maybe because the grapes tasted so much sweeter without their skins, or maybe they tasted better because they were prepared with such love – whatever the case, it was a happy childhood moment. As I fed Dad his chicken and rice, I knew he didn’t remember those days already four decades gone by, but I hoped he felt my love. 

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

This little guy is quickly taking after his Godfather, knowing precisely how to work the camera from every angle, and quick to display a versatility in playing any role. Not content to show one face to the world, he is intent on showing all of them, in as rapid-fire a manner as possible. These were all taken in the span of about a one minute. Such is the dramatic gamut of my Godson’s myriad expressions. Mr. Jaxon already knows how to work it.

Oh little man – how much hope rests on your little head – and how quickly we have already fallen in love with you. Keep your smile, keep your wonder, keep your mischief, keep your quiet, keep your cunning, keep your smirk, and keep your spirit. Keep all the secrets that make you such a happy boy, and hold onto them. These magic days will pass too quickly, but we will note them here, and immortalize them in these images – reminders of how much you are loved. 

The newest addition to the Ilagan family, Jaxon, has already mastered the art of the pose. Mostly though, he is content to sleep and it is in this peaceful state that we usually find him. (I am all for a sleeping baby.)

Dad has even taken an interest in him, which is a feat in and of itself. He’s made a connection, and the very ends of our family have come together, generations already bound in love. There’s something reassuring abut being sandwiched in-between them – a sense of history being carried on, life continuing its beautiful path forward. 

As for Jaxon, he won’t remember any of this, and who knows what sort of remnants of our time with him now will remain. I’ve written him a few letters to have something physical on record of these days, and they say the internet lives forever, so maybe some search engine when he’s an adult will bring up this post in garbled form, and remind him of how precious he has always been to us. 

While this site always goes dark on 9/11, yesterday also happened to be my Dad’s 92nd birthday, so he gets an extra day of celebration, as anyone who has made it to the age of 92 deserves. The last year has continued to bring about a slow and steady decline, but there are still rare moments of engagement and joy that can be elicited, sometimes by the littlest member of our family, his grandson Jaxon Layne. 

Every now and then the Dad that we used to know resurfaces, sometimes at the unlikeliest of times, and we are reminded of happier days and childhood and the benign love of a father. For his birthday dinner, he had a few of those moments, when we got him to smile and interact for a brief moment. 

I had a couple quiet times with him too, when he saw me and we connected in the midst of the cacophony of kids and talking, liked we used to do. It was a cross-generation of Ilagans at the dining room table, celebrating our patriarch. 

Happy Birthday, Dad – we love you.